Andy Malkinson whose 2004 rape conviction was overturned on appeal Wednesday with the help of legal reform charity Appeal, said he could not “express fully how it feels to be falsely convicted for perhaps the worst thing a man can be accused of.” Photo courtesy of Sophia Spring/Appeal
July 27 (UPI) — A British man had his conviction for a violent rape quashed in the Court of Appeal in London after serving two decades of a life sentence after DNA evidence linked another suspect to the case.
Andrew Malkinson walked free Wednesday after the court accepted DNA evidence implicating another man in the 2003 rape of a 33-year-old woman who was left for dead by the side of a motorway and that there was no physical or forensic evidence linking him to the crime.
The court said Malkinson had been the victim of a “grave miscarriage of justice.” The Crown Prosecution Service, which brought the case against Malkinson, did not contest the appeal.
Speaking after the court hearing, Malkinson, 57, who spent the past 20 years — 17 years of it in a maximum security prison — fighting to clear his name, said the whole experience had created “a gaping black hole” in his life.
“I did not commit the crime but I was treated as if I did,” he said.
Malkinson said he was not listened to from the moment Manchester police showed up at his home to when he pointed to the fact he bore no resemblance to the suspect they were looking for to his trial followed by years of fruitless effort to get authorities to re-open his case.
The jury in his 2004 trial did not believe him when he said he was 115 miles away at the time because the prosecution presented two witnesses who placed Malkinson at the scene — without revealing they had long criminal records and were not trustworthy.
The Court of Appeal rejected a 2006 challenge on grounds that despite fresh evidence that DNA samples the case relied upon were contaminated, the evidence linking Malkinson to the attack was sufficient for his conviction to be “safe”.
He applied twice to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the body that investigates possible miscarriages of justice, but it refused to act until 2021 when Malkinson’s supporters took Manchester police to court to force them to release files and brought forward new DNA evidence that had been available for nearly a decade.
“They didn’t investigate and didn’t believe me. Not once but twice. Today we told this court I was innocent and, finally, they listened. But I have been innocent all along, for each of those 20 years that came before today,” Malkinson said.
“Nothing any police officer, court or commission said about me since 2003 changed that reality,” added Malkinson who could have shaved as much as 10 years off his sentence by agreeing to participate in “rape rehabilitation” programs while in prison.
Malkinson was released in December 2020 but on license and a registered sex offender, severely restricting his freedoms and rights.
Manchester police apologised and have since arrested another suspect in the case who is currently under investigation.